On the day of Richard Nixon’s first inauguration, the celebrated American political cartoonist Herbert Block (Herblock), who habitually portrayed Nixon with a disreputable five o’clock shadow, drew a remarkably clean-shaven president. When questioned about his artistic largesse, the cartoonist responded that every new president was entitled to a free shave.Apparently similar generosity extends to new American secretaries of state. They, too, are entitled to a week of press buzz about, say, an imminent relaunch of the Middle East peace process.When the current flurry ended, the general consensus was that the most Secretary John Kerry’s new shuttle diplomacy would accomplish would be to help him accumulate frequent flyer miles.It is hard to see what has changed in our region since we last tuned in to justify even the ephemeral excitement. True, US President Barack Obama improved his personal image in Israel thanks to his visit. But this was a far cry from persuading Israel to take imprudent risks for an illusory peace. Obama’s address imploring Israel’s younger generation to prod the politicians into taking such risks conveniently glossed over the fact that this younger generation is mostly more nationalist and hawkish than Israel’s political elite.Kerry too has not enhanced his credibility by praising the gracious manner in which Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan accepted his Israeli counterpart’s humiliating apology over the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident. Erdogan, of course, was anything but gracious and, had he been a National Football League player, he would have been fined for both spiking the ball and taunting.Moreover, Turkey has continued to blackball Israel within NATO, a policy the Israeli apology was expected to change. To add insult to injury, Erdogan will visit his fellow Islamists in Gaza in May.Still, with the Turks, the damage was at least limited to an apology and the morally unjustified financial compensation to the families of ruffians on the Mavi Marmara, who attacked IDF soldiers. A one-sided deal with the Palestinians will exact a price not only in national pride, but in blood.Former US ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer’s attempt to resuscitate the discredited linkage between Israeli “flexibility” towards the Palestinians and solidifying the coalition against Iran has gotten things the wrong way around. By clinging to the increasingly untenable mantra that the Iranian program can still be headed off by diplomacy and sanctions, the United States discredits itself as a potential guarantor of other agreements. The repeated protestations about the US determination to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran are beginning to sound as hollow as Kerry’s claim that Washington will not tolerate a nuclear North Korea, while President Kim Jung-un displays filial piety by readying the next nuclear test and threatening nuclear war.Confidence in the Palestinian leadership was at a low ebb even before the dismissal of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Indeed, one cannot seriously negotiate with devotees of the big lie. For example, the Palestinian Authority recently sought to incite popular violence by portraying the death of a chain-smoking Palestinian prisoner from esophageal cancer as Israel’s fault; and Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi’s Miftah “human rights organization” finally apologized (in English but not in Arabic) for commemorating Passover by reviving the blood libel of matza baked with non- Jewish blood.All the above is not intended to deprecate Kerry’s abilities but to argue that the Procrustean bed of the two-state solution – that crams two states into the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River – is unworkable.The only two-state solution that has a chance – either via partition of Judea and Samaria or through some form of shared sovereignty over the area – involves Israel and Jordan. It is not too late to undo the mischief wrought by the 1974 Arab League Summit in Rabat that removed Jordan from the picture and, with it, the necessary territorial base for a feasible compromise. Contributor Amiel Ungar is also a columnist for the Hebrew weekly Besheva.
